(Allen‐Collinson 2013; Wall 2016), I present them here as dichotomous to better explain how theorizing is understood and engaged in each. In doing so, I recognize that I have inserted scholarly examples somewhat artificially, based on my own subjective understandings rather than the authors’ implicit intentions.
Evocative Autoethnography
Communication scholars Carolyn Ellis and Art Bochner are widely recognized for conceptualizing, curating, and promoting autoethnography, in general, and evocative autoethnography, in particular. To them, autoethnographies are personal “stories with raw and naked emotion that investigate life’s messiness, including twists of fates and chance” (Bochner and Ellis 2016b, p. 10). Researchers craft these intimate, vulnerable stories with evocation as a goal, wanting to move audiences “to care, to feel, to empathize, and to do something, to act” (Ellis and Bochner 2006, p. 433). From this perspective, stories can and do theorize (Ellis and Bochner 2006). Rather than privileging analysis over story (i.e. treating stories as data to be analyzed), scholars instead write or perform stories that frame their lived experiences in hindsight and invite others into conversation about what those experiences mean for themselves and others (Bochner and Ellis 2016b). In other words, evocative autoethnographers place themselves and their experiences under a “narrative analytic microscope,” thereby applying the same theoretical scrutiny to themselves that they readily apply to the lives of others (Goodall 2004, p. 189).
To that end, evocative autoethnography embodies emotionality and subjectivity, blurs the boundaries between the social sciences and humanities, and claims conventions of literary writing (i.e. dialogue, scenes, unfolding action, characterization) in first‐person accounts of lived experiences. As Bochner and Ellis (2016b) explain in their writings and yearly workshops:
We encouraged researchers to think of themselves as writers and to tell stories the way novelists do; we promoted emotional, vulnerable, and heartful writing; we discouraged jargon and celebrated erotic and close to the bone prose in which knowledge is delivered through emotional arousal, identification, and self‐examination rather than abstraction and explanation. “Let the story do the work,” we insisted. “Be evocative. Make your readers feel stuff; activate their subjectivity; compel them to respond viscerally.” What mattered most to us was intimate detail, not abstracted facts.
(pp. 59–60)
As a small illustrative sample, evocative accounts of health and illness have offered important insights into negotiating the social effects of life with chronic pain (Birk 2013); navigating patriarchal healthcare while living with invisible illness (Edley and Battaglia 2016) or giving birth (Ohs 2020); managing emotions outside of an eating disorder (Tillmann 2009); adjusting to new normals after a difficult diagnosis (Baglia 2019) or permanent disability (Kellett 2017; Smith 2019); and raising cultural and political consciousness of pregnancy loss (Silverman and Baglia 2014).
Analytic Autoethnography
The term analytic autoethnography refers to ethnographic research in which the researcher combines self‐narrative with dialogic engagement and is committed to developing theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena (Anderson 2006). The latter is what especially defines and distinguishes analytic autoethnography from Ellis and Bochner’s evocative autoethnography. Indeed, “the definitive feature of analytic autoethnography is this value‐added quality of not only truthfully rendering the social world under investigation but also transcending that world through broader generalization” (Anderson 2006, p. 388). This is a more conservative position that incorporates the researcher’s perspective within traditional elements of scholarly inquiry, leading some critics to claim analytic autoethnography is really no different than realist ethnography (see Ellis and Bochner 2006).
Anderson (2006) outlined five key features characterizing analytic autoethnography. First, the researcher is a complete member of the studied social world. Second, as a complete member conducting research, the researcher is also aware of her reciprocal influence on the social world under study (i.e. analytic reflexivity) and, third, is visible in the narrative representation of her work to demonstrate her personal engagement in that world. Fourth, the researcher grounds her autoethnography in her subjective experience but reaches beyond it as well in dialogue with other participants. Finally, to that end, the researcher is committed to analysis directed toward theoretical elaboration, refinement, and extension that transcends beyond the local data for broader understandings of social processes.
To illustrate, consider Laura Ellingson’s (2005) innovative ethnography of an interdisciplinary geriatric oncology team at a regional cancer center. A cancer survivor herself, she combined autoethnography with narrative ethnography, grounded theory, and feminist analyses to theorize backstage communication processes (e.g. formal reporting, informal information sharing, and relationship building) for improved frontstage patient care. While her layered account shared many of the characteristics of analytic autoethnography, Ellingson also embraced crystallization, embodied ways of knowing, and her talents as a narrative writer to evoke emotional responses that traditional analysis and representation usually eschew.
Like Ellingson (2009; Ellingson and Ellis 2008), some scholars call for a moderate approach to autoethnography that is both self‐focused and analytical:
What I wish to do in this article is draw attention to the middle ground, to encourage would‐be autoethnographers to consider a balanced perspective that lies between the warring factions of evocative and analytic approaches to this method, one that captures the meanings and events of one life in an ethical way but also in a way that moves collective thinking forward – a moderate autoethnography.
(Wall 2016, p. 7)
Erin Willer’s (2020) compelling autoethnography of running as an embodied practice under the load of infertility, baby loss, and motherhood provides an apt example. Willer drew from her detailed running log, which consisted of “the successes and challenges of my runs themselves, but also my memories, experiences, and sense‐making surrounding my infertility, losses, motherhood, and transitioning into being 40 years old that running conjures up” (Willer 2020, p. 3), to explore meanings born from this running‐in‐process state and to expose the sociocultural challenges that women similarly experience. Willer writes with striking sensory detail, literary artfulness, and soulful heart (i.e. evocative) while also theorizing feminist embodiments of health and unsteady spaces of freedom (i.e. analytic). In other studies, autoethnographers in health communication have combined singular personal stories with theoretical understandings of – for example – disenfranchised grief when an ex‐spouse dies (Tullis 2017), feminist perspectives on patient consent during illness (Cole 2020), revealing and concealing invisible illness (Defenbaugh 2013), and the moral process of bearing witness to suffering in the intensive care unit (Sharf 2019). Moderate autoethnographies like these “tap into legitimate and unique sources of knowledge and insight that come from a particular view of one’s place in the world” in evocative tellings that are supported by theory and connected to relevant literature (Wall 2016, p. 7).
Rhetoric of Health and Medicine
Within a university communication department, shared theoretical constructs (e.g. narrative, metaphor, ideology, hegemony) can unite methodological differences – namely, the critical‐interpretive health communication and the rhetoric of health and medicine – as scholars investigate meaning‐making in a variety of health‐related contexts (see Keranën 2015; Lynch and Zoller 2015). Rhetoric can be defined in various ways, but it generally refers to the study of persuasive discourses in any number of forms, including spoken, written, mediated, or face‐to‐face. In health communication, rhetorical criticism has been “invaluable in answering important questions about how best to communicate health information, the consequences of those messages, and how cultures come to understand and address particular health concerns” (Stokes 2014, p. 279).
Beyond and within health communication (see Lynch and Zoller 2015), rhetoric of health and medicine is a burgeoning, robust area of scholarship, spanning rhetorical